I have a Western Digital portable hard drive that is no longer recognized by computers. I've plugged it into 3 different computers and none recognize it. When plugged into a computer for the first time there is no pop up about a driver being installed. The light on the case comes on when plugged into a power outlet but that's about it, no flashing lights showing the portable hard drive is active. Are there some ways to see if the portable hard drive is dead and, if so, are there any ways to recover the contents (about 200 GB of pictures, documents, videos) ?? thanks
Just take it out of the external drive case and plug it into your computer case to see if it is working, and please make regular backups.
It's quite possible that the actual USB interface has died. I came across this recently on an external hard drive - the light did come on, but the drive itself would not power up. I removed the hard drive from its case and it worked fine when used with my own USB hard drive interface. An external hard drive is just a regular desktop or laptop hard drive in a case with a USB interface.